Land expropriation a ‘win-win for all’, says Ramaphosa

Ramaphosa said expropriation will not benefit politicians or the elite at a breakfast meeting in Pietermaritzburg on Saturday.

Expropriation of land without compensation will not benefit politicians or the elite, but will lead to a “win-win situation” for all, President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Saturday.

“Let it be clear that the land as it is given to our people is not going to be given to politicians, it is going to be given to our people,” Ramaphosa told a business breakfast in Pietermaritzburg as part of the African National Congress’s national “Thuma Mina” weekend campaign.

“Revolutionary parties, in the end, when it comes to land reform processes, they go and grab for themselves. The elite go and grab. This is not an elite empowerment process for land. It is an empowerment process of our people as a whole,” said Ramaphosa.

ANC KwaZulu-Natal chairman Sihle Zikalala and deputy chairman Mike Mabuyakhulu were among those attending the event along with Ramaphosa.

“We want a win-win outcome, we want our people to win, and so do we want those who are holding land to also have some measure of successes as well,” said Ramaphosa.

Some companies had already told him “they want to give land away,” and joint ownership was one of the measures being considered.

“We must be a country governed by the rule of law. Past leaders of this country under apartheid did as they please. We now want the rule of law to be guiding how we should live with one another,” he said.

Turning to the recession the country had entered, Ramaphosa said it “was bound to correct itself in the next quarter”.

“And besides that, we have been here before. We have faced such a situation before, and economies go through cyclical processes; economies grow and they go down sometimes,” he said. “Smart governments” were able to give guidance throughout tough economic times, which was what government would do.

“We are going to respond to this moment that we are going through and in a number of days we are going to be giving a government response on what we want to do to inject more impetus into our economy.”

Government was responsive and kept its finger on the pulse of what was happening. Job creation was still “a major problem”, but measures would be taken to address this, Ramaphosa said.

Ramaphosa is expected at a community meeting in Chatsworth later on Saturday afternoon.